My site and mail temporarily went down a couple of weeks ago. Since it's been back up I can't access any of the features from home nor view the webpage or access the CP from work. My smartphone shows the website. I've tried accessing the webmail from my phone too but can't get in.

My hosting provider can access the features from where he is and confirms that everything is as it should be. Friends have also said they can see the pages on their connections however neither me or Mr 8 can view it on our computers at home. We both use Firefox as a browser on Macs. His OS is 10.3.9 and mine is 10.4.11. I've reset the router but nothing has changed.

Someone suggested it could be a dns cache issue, and that it needs flushing. I've opened Terminal and used the command 'lookupd –flushcache' but it's not recognised. When I enter 'sudo lookupd –flushcache' I get a warning that using 'sudo' incorrectly could wipe files off my computer.

I'm concerned about doing irreparable damage to my computer but at present don't have funds to take it to the Apple store. Can anyone advise me on what I can do from home to fix this?

ETA: since this happened, I also cannot view Youtube videos. All I see is a black box with no start or pause buttons at the bottom.

lookupd needs to be run as root. sudo runs commands as root (the superuser, who can do anything), so they put a big warning when you first run it so you think about what you're doing. That command won't cause problems, though-- just be careful if you have to use sudo that you know what you're doing. There ARE ways to pretty thoroughly hose your system by doing things as root. (Most unix administrators have done at least one of them at least once. It's kind of a rite of passage.)

So go ahead and run "sudo lookupd --flushcache" (I think you need --flushcache with 2 -s rather than just 1 -, so if one doesn't work try the other). Make sure you quite out of firefox when you do this because firefox may think it's more clever than you and keep the lookup cached anyway.

If that doesn't work you can PM me the hostname of your web site and mail and stuff and I'll do some poking around from this end and see if I can find anything obviously wrong or give you better info. There are some more troubleshooting things you can do, but flushing lookupd's resolver cache is the best and easiest first step.

I'm not too sure as to why your site and mail originally went down? In restoring it is there any chance that anything was 'upgraded', just the OS versions on the Macs you are using are now quite old and might not handle newer code too well. My partner recently upgraded her 8 year old Mac iBook for this reason, computer was fine but due to age at the limit for OS upgrades so she couldn't see some Flash and also YouTube movies... just a thought

I'm not too sure as to why your site and mail originally went down? In restoring it is there any chance that anything was 'upgraded', just the OS versions on the Macs you are using are now quite old and might not handle newer code too well. My partner recently upgraded her 8 year old Mac iBook for this reason, computer was fine but due to age at the limit for OS upgrades so she couldn't see some Flash and also YouTube movies... just a thought

That was my thought as well. Macs are currently in OS 10.7. Hope you can find a solution soon, 8ball! <3